"During peacetime, the age limit for recruits was thirty, extended to forty-five and higher when the country went to war. Seventeen was usually the minimum age, although the recruiting sergeant rarely questioned a promising youth."

A fine example Bill, thanks for finding it. Yes, the regs that I posted were for British in Britain at the beginning of the Napoleonic era. They generally held true for Canada, but, of course, recrutiing that went on here was rarely for "regulars".

11 years of age,.holy geez! Was he put into line service or was he a fifer, drummer or buglar,.do you know?

term of service was 3 years, did they say what happened? I mean 14 is a little early to retire isn't it? haha. 4'11 would have been a pretty big for an 11 year old back then, I mean wasn't the average height like 5'5 or something like that?

It also makes you wonder what the circumstances were surrounding his enlistment. I don't think he did it for the free food. lol. I guess we take it for granted how good we have it now.

Lots of the records indicated whether the soldier reenlisted, or left the army with a status of "Service expired", "Died", "Deserted" etc... This one unfortunately was incomplete. Given his young age at enlistment, it's possible that he may have been one of the last living veterans of the war.

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